Jamaican bobsled team raises more than 26,000 dogecoins for Olympic trip

A fundraising campaign to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games has already brought in more than 26,000 dogecoins.

The team, made famous by the John Candy film Cool Runnings, qualified for the Winter Olympics for the first time since 2002.

Winston Watt, 46, competed in 2002 and he spent his own money on training sessions and equipment for the 2014 squad. He made it public knowledge that he didn’t have enough cash to get the team to the Games in Sochi.

Based on bitcoin, Dogecoin is a crypto-currency that has acquired millions of fans because it is named after a meme made popular for its humorous broken English phrases. One of the people behind the digital currency, Liam Butler, is a fan of the Jamaican bobsled team.

"As someone who grew up in the ’90s, Cool Runnings was the ultimate feel-good movie about underdogs out of their element achieving their dreams," Butler said. "When I was about seven years old, my best friend and I had a billy-cart that his dad built. When we would start our run down his driveway, we would shout out the catchphrase from the movie: 'Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up, it's bobsled time!'"

In order to raise cash to send Watt and the team to the Sochi Olympic Games, Butler launched a currency called “Dogesled.” Within 12 hours, the dogecoin to bitcoin exchange rate was up 50 percent. "We started without a concrete plan in mind," Butler said. "I sent a few emails out… but that was the extent of it."

At that exchange rate, Butler now has $25,000 in real money to send to the bobsled team.

[The Guardian] [The Verge] [RT]